After receiving over 1,000 page views and more comments on the Good, the Bad and the Ugly than all of my other published writings on AC, I felt the definite need to say something in response to negative comments made towards me concerning my knowledge of natural hair. Furthermore, since I would like to write more articles on natural hair and styles that can be done with it, I feel the need to qualify myself a bit.
I have been natural for over three years. I cut the perm out of my hair the summer before my sophomore year in college and even now, after being out of college for two years, I still do not have a perm and have never had a texturizer. I am a member of nappurality.com and have been so for about three years and was very active, looking at the site everyday for about two years. I have only been wearing my hair straight for approximately one year and two months. As a natural in college I wore twists, twists outs, fros, banded fros. I did hairdos myself. I went to salons. I had other naturals do my hair.
While in college, many of my friends had natural hair and went natural because they saw my natural hair and how well it framed my face. I had two friends who were very close to me with natural hair. One went back to perms and one wears braids now.
As a complete natural with no straightening, I had a lot of fun. I did feel that my hair was beautiful and gorgeous. There is no reason why other people should not feel that their hair is beautiful. I still feel that my unstraightened hair is lovely. I cannot stand perms as much as the next natural person.
However, I do believe that the love of natural hair is a political thing. Black woman these days are breaking away from the bondage of perms. They are asserting their independence just like people who burned bras years ago, and that is fine. However, in their assertion of independence, I think that sometimes black women do not look at the reality of things. For instance, the workplace will always be the work place and people just judge you on how you look. That is just what they do. It’s the same as a goth asserting that he should be able to wear his piercings to work. Its who he or she is, what could be wrong. Well, reality is that people judge you on your appearance, and that is just how it is.
Personally, I believe that when I walk into a interview with twists, I get a different response than when I walk in with my sleek straightened up do. I would rather not wear wigs for an interview and then become a different person when I come to work. For black women, there is already a silence in the work place. We never know if there is a glass ceiling or not. On average, for some unknown reason, women in general make less than men. Why give our bosses another reason to not give us this or that opportunity?
Also, in my permed life previous to my natural life, I had always felt that I was very pretty. When I was natural, with little twists and fros, I just did not feel the same way. Maybe I had an attraction to my hair blowing in the wind. Oh well. No need for judgements here. However, my straightened hair is flowing and has more volume than the average permed head. I get my natural hair straightened at a salon about every two to three weeks and yes it does last that long. I love my hair now, and I love it then. However, straightening is just better for me. I feel better about it. For you things might be different, and perhaps I wrote the good, bad and ugly article a bit too quickly without making sure I had a bit of a softer tone. However, I believe that the reason why I got so many comments and page views is because being natural more about politics than it is about beauty.
